


The Void

by TheWorldAndTheEmpress



Category: The Killing
Genre: Angst, Child Loss, Death, Family, Gen, Grieving Mother - Freeform, Mother-Daughter Relationship, losing a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 19:29:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17883812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWorldAndTheEmpress/pseuds/TheWorldAndTheEmpress
Summary: Danette wakes up one morning in March and she doesn’t know that her world is shattered and the ground has collapsed beneath her feet.orKallie goes missing and her mother is in no way prepared for how deeply she will miss her.





	The Void

**Author's Note:**

> Season 3(/4) of The Killing
> 
> This show stirred up a lot of emotions in me, but the character that I can't let go is Danette Leeds. To me, her story arc was absolutely heartbreaking. She went through a drastic change, realized too late how much love she had in her and I wanted so badly for her to get her child back :'(
> 
> I had to get this angst out of my system and write a short story about her looking for her daughter and coming to terms with her death.

Danette wakes up one morning in March and she doesn’t know that her world is shattered and the ground has collapsed beneath her feet. She gets up, drinks her morning coffee and goes to work just like any other day. Like a cartoon character running off a cliff, she keeps walking in the air, because she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know that soon she’ll look down to see that there is nothing but a bottomless void to swallow her and she will fall.

* * *

She doesn’t know where her child is, but that’s not uncommon. Kallie doesn’t call her every hour, telling her where she’s at. She saw her just yesterday and the girl was fine. Danette never worries, she knows there’s no need. Kallie is 15, she’s not a baby anymore and she takes care of herself.

When a detective knocks on her door and asks her questions about Kallie’s whereabouts, Danette still isn’t worried. This isn’t the first time the girl has caused trouble, running off for a few days and having run-ins with the law. Danette knows she’ll come back, she always comes back.

But one day turns into four and five and six days. There is no sign of Kallie. Danette expects her daughter to be home for the weekend, but she isn’t. The sheets she has prepared for her stay folded on top of the laundry machine. 

More detectives come to see her. Other young girls have been murdered in the city, and no one has seen Kallie for days.

Danette doesn’t know where her child is, and she’s worried.

She suddenly remembers that time she has forgotten: when Kallie was just 3 years old and Danette was taking her out of town for the weekend. They were in the crowded Seattle train station when Kallie suddenly disappeared. Hundreds of people where rushing in every direction, trains passed by at high speed and the small child was impossible to spot. Danette looked for over half an hour, while having the time to imagine unthinkable scenarios of little feet stumbling and falling onto the tracks. 

When the crying child was finally found by a helpful ticket salesman and passed to Danette, she held her close for a long moment. She wasn’t normally a very affectionate mother, but she did care for her daughter. The deep fear she had just felt wasn’t something she ever wanted to experience again.

Yet here she is, many years later, feeling that same fear awaken inside her.

“Kallie, where _are_ you?” she asks her daughter’s voicemail in desperation as she drives around town looking up every alley in the hopes of catching a glimpse of her.

It takes Danette a while, but eventually she realizes what she should have known long ago: Kallie has been taken. She hasn’t run off on her own will and she won’t walk back in through the front door that Danette leaves unlocked at night just in case. Someone has taken her daughter from her and the anger that builds up inside her is almost strong enough to make her forget how much she misses her.

A few weeks ago, Danette was happy any time Kallie was out of the house so she could have some peace and quiet and not have to deal with things such as being a parent. Thinking back on it now, it makes her feel sick. How could she ever have wished for her to go away? Now she only has one wish in the whole world. She wants her daughter to come home. If only she’d come home, Danette would hold her close just like that day at the train station many years ago, and she would never let go.

Unfortunately, her wishes aren’t being heard. Kallie stays missing and the void in Danette’s heart grows larger every day.

“Kallie’s not dead!” she tells the woman at the police station. The woman who is there for the same reason as her, to look for her own daughter.

The other woman seems to have lost hope, her baby has been missing for longer. But she needs to understand that Danette hasn’t lost her daughter. She is still alive, she has to be. The alternative is something Danette has never even stopped to think about. Kallie was thrown into her life so fast, too soon for Danette to be a mother. The thought has never crossed her mind that the girl could ever be ripped away from her just as quickly.

But as the weeks go on, a seed of doubt is planted within her, and it grows. The nightmares that wake her every night leave her exhausted in the day. She has never been a religious person, but as she passes a church late one night, putting up flyers with the face of her missing daughter on every lamp post, her steps lead her through the grand doors and up to the altar. There’s no one else there. Tears start running down her cheeks. She gets down on her knees and prays.

_Don’t take my child, please, don’t take my child. Take anything else, I beg you. Just don’t take my child._

They didn’t share many of those happy family moments together, Danette and her daughter. A lot of the time they were fighting, and even when they weren’t, Danette didn’t know how to be a mother. It’s not until Kallie is missing that Danette realizes how much those smaller moments mean to her. Waking up on Saturday morning to find Kallie sleeping on the couch, she always looked so young. Eating left over pizza together in front of the tv, the sound of Kallie’s chuckles when a character said something funny. 

The memory of Kallie is what keeps her going. She could have fallen a long time ago, but she pushes away the thoughts that tell her what she knows deep inside: she doesn’t have a daughter anymore.

It’s not until she’s standing in front of the male detective, and she hears those words, that she knows. She can’t deny it anymore.

_She’s at the morgue._

Kallie is gone. While Danette has been looking and hoping and missing and praying, she’s been gone all along. Danette can finally see now, that the ground beneath her has crumbled long ago. There is nothing left to keep her upright. No pleas, no tears, no wishes in the world can bring her daughter back to her. There’s only her and the bottomless void. She finally looks down, and she falls.


End file.
